So sorry I left best pal to die
Jailhouse interview with driver in drunken hit-run
HE WRECKED his speeding car, killed his best friend and took off after causing a drunken head-on collision that scattered car parts all over a Bronx street, cops said.
But the only thing driver Tanbir Islam says he remembers of the fatal Thursday crash was his mother and sister yelling at him when he finally staggered home.
Islam, 21, said he didn’t know why they were so mad until they handed him a phone with one of his friends on the other line who told him his closest buddy, Christopher Hulse — who was in the backseat of Islam’s Toyota when it veered into oncoming traffic — was dead.
“It gets blurry after we left the bar,” Islam told the Daily News on Sunday from jail. “I’m still trying to piece everything together. I can’t process this.”
The minivan he hit at 75 mph, three times the city’s speed limit? He doesn’t remember it. The extrication tool that freed him from his crumpled car? He doesn’t recall. The anguished screams from his buddy in the backseat? He never heard them.
The other stuff he remembers — the Blue Moon beers, the Long Island iced teas, the shots of tequila.
Islam said he and Hulse, also 21, had been tight since high school and would hang out every day when Islam returned from his studies at Syracuse University, where he is one semester away from a degree in information management and technology.
Islam said he often made the school’s dean’s list and wanted to work in IT consulting after finishing his studies. He was back home in the Bronx for the winter break.
He and Hulse had hung out all day before the crash. Islam said he picked Hulse up at the gym and the pals had some food, took a drive over to New Jersey to check out some car parts and then returned to the Bronx. They met up with three other friends at a local watering hole.
They started drinking. Then they drank some more. Then his mind went blank.
“I wish someone would have stopped me, taken away my keys, but this is my fault,” he said, breaking down and crying with his face buried in his palms.
“I’m so sorry and I want everyone to know I’m sorry. But I know that won’t bring back my friend.”
The tears also won’t wash away the other blot he feels on his soul — abandoning his very best friend as he lay dying.
“I keep seeing Christopher’s face,” Islam said. “It keeps popping up in my mind.”
Cops said when an emergency crew extricated Islam from his Camry, he left the grisly scene instead of staying around to help Hulse or his three other friends in the car.
It wasn’t until five hours later, after the upbraiding from his mother and sister sobered him up a little, that Islam stumbled, reeking of alcohol, into Jacobi Medical Center, where he was arrested and charged with manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident and driving while intoxicated.
His right hand had some minor scrapes and he said his knee was a little banged up.
“You left one of your best friends like that?” a shocked Fatima Louis, 26, Hulse’s cousin, asked. “Just to die?”
Islam started to cry at the Vernon C. Bain Center every time he talked of Hulse, whom he described as “smart and kind and a good friend.”
“He was always there for me,” Islam said.
“He had this good aura around him all the time. He was such a good friend to me.
“His family would invite me to their gatherings, and I would invite Christopher to mine. They were so sweet and kind to me. I’m so sorry.”
Islam called Hulse and his other friends in the car “my brothers.”
“They said I abandoned my brothers,” Islam said. “I would never mean to do that.”
Islam didn’t know whether his other friends had survived the crash until a reporter told him only Hulse had died.
“I can’t think of what I’ve done to them, to their families,” he said. Islam was arraigned Saturday on the charges as his sullen family looked on.
“Seeing my family in the courtroom — they raised me to do good, to do well. Now look what I’ve done,” he said.
Eri Minaya, 21, who was sitting behind Islam when the car crashed, said everyone else, including Islam, seemed fine when they left the bar.
“It was all our faults at the end of the day; we were all drinking and we all understood what happened,” Minaya said from his hospital bed.
He blamed the accident on a problem with the car.
Passenger Boubacar Maiga, who was also still hospitalized, said Islam just got scared.
“The charges they gave him will probably land him in jail for the rest of his life, but that’s something he does not deserve,” said Maiga, also 21. “He really does not deserve what they’re trying to give him.”